Why We Cannot Win

published 20/09/2004, but still up-to-date one year later !
by Al Lorentz

Before I begin, let me state that I am a soldier currently deployed in Iraq, I am not an armchair quarterback. Nor am I some politically idealistic and naïve young soldier, I am an old and seasoned Non-Commissioned Officer with nearly 20 years under my belt. Additionally, I am not just a soldier with a muds-eye view of the war, I am in Civil Affairs and as such, it is my job to be aware of all the events occurring in this country and specifically in my region.
I have come to the conclusion that we cannot win here for a number of reasons. Ideology and idealism will never trump history and reality.
When we were preparing to deploy, I told my young soldiers to beware of the "political solution." Just when you think you have the situation on the ground in hand, someone will come along with a political directive that throws you off the tracks.
I believe that we could have won this un-Constitutional invasion of Iraq and possibly pulled off the even more un-Constitutional occupation and subjugation of this sovereign nation. It might have even been possible to foist democracy on these people who seem to have no desire, understanding or respect for such an institution. True the possibility of pulling all this off was a long shot and would have required several hundred billion dollars and even more casualties than we’ve seen to date but again it would have been possible, not realistic or necessary but possible.
But here are the specific reasons why we cannot win in Iraq.

First, we refuse to deal in reality. We are in a guerilla war, but because of politics, we are not allowed to declare it a guerilla war and must label the increasingly effective guerilla forces arrayed against us as "terrorists, criminals and dead-enders."
This implies that there is a zero sum game at work, i.e. we can simply kill X number of the enemy and then the fight is over, mission accomplished, everybody wins. Unfortunately, this is not the case. We have few tools at our disposal and those are proving to be wholly ineffective at fighting the guerillas.
The idea behind fighting a guerilla army is not to destroy its every man (an impossibility since he hides himself by day amongst the populace). Rather the idea in guerilla warfare is to erode or destroy his base of support.
So long as there is support for the guerilla, for every one you kill two more rise up to take his place. More importantly, when your tools for killing him are precision guided munitions, raids and other acts that create casualties among the innocent populace, you raise the support for the guerillas and undermine the support for yourself. (A 500-pound precision bomb has a casualty-producing radius of 400 meters minimum; do the math.)

Second, our assessment of what motivates the average Iraqi was skewed, again by politically motivated "experts." We came here with some fantasy idea that the natives were all ignorant, mud-hut dwelling camel riders who would line the streets and pelt us with rose petals, lay palm fronds in the street and be eternally grateful. While at one time there may have actually been support and respect from the locals, months of occupation by our regular military forces have turned the formerly friendly into the recently hostile.
Attempts to correct the thinking in this regard are in vain; it is not politically correct to point out the fact that the locals are not only disliking us more and more, they are growing increasingly upset and often overtly hostile. Instead of addressing the reasons why the locals are becoming angry and discontented, we allow politicians in Washington DC to give us pat and convenient reasons that are devoid of any semblance of reality.
We are told that the locals are not upset because we have a hostile, aggressive and angry Army occupying their nation. We are told that they are not upset at the police state we have created, or at the manner of picking their representatives for them. Rather we are told, they are upset because of a handful of terrorists, criminals and dead enders in their midst have made them upset, that and of course the ever convenient straw man of "left wing media bias."

Third, the guerillas are filling their losses faster than we can create them. This is almost always the case in guerilla warfare, especially when your tactics for battling the guerillas are aimed at killing guerillas instead of eroding their support. For every guerilla we kill with a "smart bomb" we kill many more innocent civilians and create rage and anger in the Iraqi community. This rage and anger translates into more recruits for the terrorists and less support for us.
We have fallen victim to the body count mentality all over again. We have shown a willingness to inflict civilian casualties as a necessity of war without realizing that these same casualties create waves of hatred against us. These angry Iraqi citizens translate not only into more recruits for the guerilla army but also into more support of the guerilla army.

Fourth, their lines of supply and communication are much shorter than ours and much less vulnerable. We must import everything we need into this place; this costs money and is dangerous. Whether we fly the supplies in or bring them by truck, they are vulnerable to attack, most especially those brought by truck. This not only increases the likelihood of the supplies being interrupted. Every bean, every bullet and every bandage becomes infinitely more expensive.
Conversely, the guerillas live on top of their supplies and are showing every indication of developing a very sophisticated network for obtaining them. Further, they have the advantage of the close support of family and friends and traditional religious networks.

Fifth, we consistently underestimate the enemy and his capabilities. Many military commanders have prepared to fight exactly the wrong war here.
Our tactics have not adjusted to the battlefield and we are falling behind.
Meanwhile the enemy updates his tactics and has shown a remarkable resiliency and adaptability.
Because the current administration is more concerned with its image than it is with reality, it prefers symbolism to substance: soldiers are dying here and being maimed and crippled for life. It is tragic, indeed criminal that our elected public servants would so willingly sacrifice our nation's prestige and honor as well as the blood and treasure to pursue an agenda that is ahistoric and un-Constitutional.
It is all the more ironic that this un-Constitutional mission is being performed by citizen soldiers such as myself who swore an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States, the same oath that the commander in chief himself has sworn.

Al Lorentz is former state chairman of the Constitution Party of Texas and is a reservist currently serving with the US Army in Iraq.

"Alle Politiker reden Bullshit"

(Sebastian Moll / Harry G. Frankfurt Die Welt - 28-8-2005)

Harry G. Frankfurt, emeritierter Professor in Princeton, hat ein schmales Büchlein geschrieben - und damit riesigen Erfolg

Sebastian Moll traf den Mann, der sich in "On Bullshit" fragt, was viele gern wüßten: Warum erwartet niemand mehr von Politikern, daß sie die Wahrheit sagen, obwohl sich alle danach sehnen?

Es ist die unwahrscheinlichste Erfolgsgeschichte des amerikanischen Bücher-Sommers. Ein 67 Seiten dünnes Buch, auf dem in elegant geschwungenen Lettern "On Bullshit" prangt, hält sich seit Wochen auf den vorderen Plätzen sämtlicher Bestsellerlisten. Sein Verfasser, der 76jährige Philosoph Harry G. Frankfurt, wollte eigentlich seinen Ruhestand genießen - nun ist er über Nacht zum Medienliebling geworden. Frankfurt versteht unter Bullshit - im Gegensatz zu Lüge oder Wahrheit - den völligen Verlust der Realität als Bezugspunkt. Seine Diagnose, daß das unentwegte Produzieren von heißer Luft, das sogenannte "bullshitting", zunehmend ein Hauptmerkmal moderner Politik ist, scheint in der Bush-Ära einen Nerv zu treffen. Und nachträglich eine Erklärung für die Niederlage John Kerrys zu liefern: Kerry war der unbegabtere "Bullshitter".

Der Autor des Bestsellers wohnt mit seiner Frau in einer viktorianischen Villa nahe der Elite-Universität Princeton, wo er in den letzten Jahren seiner Laufbahn Philosophie unterrichtet hat. Der Ort verströmt die britische Gediegenheit, die man von den Renommier-Hochschulen der amerikanischen Ostküste kennt. Im Gespräch hört Frankfurt genau zu und nimmt sich Zeit, um möglichst präzise zu antworten. Doch in ihm, so spürt man, gärt es: Frankfurt führt einen Feldzug gegen den achtlosen Umgang mit Sprache und Wahrheit.

Welt am Sonntag: Herr Professor Frankfurt, ein 20 Jahre alter Aufsatz von Ihnen ist plötzlich zum nationalen Bestseller geworden. Sie sind ein Medienstar in den USA - was Philosophen nicht häufig passiert. Können Sie sich das erklären?

Harry Frankfurt: Mein Lektor kannte den Aufsatz, den ich in einer Literaturzeitschrift veröffentlicht hatte, und kam vor einem Jahr auf die Idee, man sollte ihn als Büchlein neu auflegen. Warum genau, weiß ich nicht. Der Erfolg und die Aufmerksamkeit sind für mich so aufregend, wie sie mich verwirren. Zuerst dachte ich, es habe mit dem Titel zu tun. Es ist in den USA nicht eben vornehm, Bullshit zu sagen, und die Tatsache, daß sich ein Professor einer Elite-Universität mit einem solchen Wort beschäftigt, ist eine Provokation. Mittlerweile glaube ich allerdings, daß der Erfolg wohl auch damit zu tun hat, daß die Leute unter all dem Bullshit, mit dem sie täglich gefüttert werden, einen großen Appetit auf die Wahrheit entwickelt haben.

Haben Sie eine Idee, wie man Bullshit noch übersetzen könnte?

Frankfurt: Ich denke, Humbug käme dem recht nahe. Allerdings bedeutet Humbug nicht genau dasselbe wie Bullshit. Humbug impliziert eine vorsätzlich falsche Darstellung der Dinge. Das trifft auf Bullshit nicht zu. Bullshit ist weder vorsätzlich falsch noch vorsätzlich richtig. Bullshit zeichnet sich gerade dadurch aus, daß Richtig und Falsch keine relevanten Kategorien mehr sind.

Es scheint den Begriff nur im Englischen zu geben. Ist Bullshit demnach ein angloamerikanisches Phänomen?

Frankfurt: Das glaube ich nicht. Bullshit tritt überall dort auf, wo die Beteiligung der Bürger am politischen Prozeß stark gefragt ist. Ich denke, während der Französischen Revolution gab es haufenweise Bullshit. Aber natürlich auch im Dritten Reich.

Verfolgen Sie die deutsche Politik?

Frankfurt: Ich habe in der Zeitung etwas über die junge Frau gelesen, die als Kanzlerin kandidiert.

Amtsinhaber Gerhard Schröder hat die letzte Wahl auch auf Grund seiner Gegnerschaft zum Irak-Krieg gewonnen. Das versucht er diesmal erneut. Ist das Bullshit?

Frankfurt: Ich kann mir dazu kein Urteil anmaßen. Aber ich würde vermuten, daß es Bullshit ist, einfach weil nahezu alles, was in der Politik gesagt wird, heutzutage Bullshit ist.

Trifft das auf die USA mehr zu als auf Europa?

Frankfurt: Vielleicht ist die Sorge der Politiker um die öffentliche Meinung in Amerika ein wenig größer als in Europa. Ich denke aber, daß es Bullshit in jedem Land gibt, in dem eine Regierung von der Zustimmung der Bürger abhängt. Die Regierung will stets die Leute überzeugen, daß sie einen guten Job macht, und produziert deshalb Bullshit.

Demokratie produziert also unweigerlich Sorglosigkeit im Umgang mit der Wahrheit?

Frankfurt: Sicherlich. Der Druck, Bullshit zu fabrizieren, ist in Demokratien besonders groß, weil Politiker zu allem eine Meinung haben müssen. Sie können aber unmöglich über alles informiert sein und produzieren deshalb unweigerlich Bullshit. Aber auch totalitäre Regime können nicht überleben, wenn die Bevölkerung sie völlig ablehnt. Deshalb waren ja die Nazis Meister des Bullshits.

Ist demnach Bullshit Propaganda?

Frankfurt: Ja, Propaganda und Bullshit sind sich sehr nahe. Beide zielen auf Manipulation ab.

Sie werfen in Ihrem Buch die Frage auf, warum Amerika mehr Geduld mit Bullshit hat als mit der Lüge, obwohl es das größere Übel ist: Der Lügner hat noch einen Begriff von der Wahrheit, sonst könnte er nicht lügen. Haben Sie eine Antwort darauf?

Frankfurt: Ich habe bislang keine Antwort. Vielleicht denken die Menschen, daß Bullshit leichter zu entlarven ist als das Lügen und deshalb weniger gefährlich.

Im Amerika von George W. Bush scheint man sich daran gewöhnt zu haben, daß sich niemand mehr um die Wahrheit schert.

Frankfurt: Ja, die Leute stören sich nicht mehr sonderlich an Bullshit. Bushs schamlose Verwendung von Bullshit hat allerdings Gegnerschaft mobilisiert. Für meinen Geschmack ist diese Gegnerschaft sogar etwas zu kritisch. Die Kritiker von Bush behaupten etwa, der Grund für den Krieg gegen den Irak sei Bullshit gewesen. Ich bin aber gar nicht so sicher, daß die Behauptung, der Irak produziere Massenvernichtungswaffen, Bullshit war. Es ist doch gar nicht klar, ob Bush selbst daran geglaubt hat oder nicht. Wenn er es geglaubt hat, war es kein Bullshit.

Die US-Medien scheinen dem Beispiel der Politik zu folgen.

Frankfurt: Es gibt sicherlich mehr Bullshit in den Medien als je zuvor. Es gibt aber auch große Anstrengungen, den Bullshit in den Medien zu entlarven.

Was kann man gegen den Verlust des Realitätsbezugs tun?

Frankfurt: Das einzige Gegenmittel zum Bullshit, das mir einfällt, ist die Lächerlichkeit. Nur wenn man sich über Bullshit mokiert, kann man ihn entschärfen. So wie es in Amerika etwa parodistische Nachrichtensendungen wie die "Daily Show" tun.

Was ist eigentlich so schlimm an Bullshit?

Frankfurt: Er ist nicht prinzipiell moralisch verwerflich. Ich denke, das Hauptproblem ist, daß die Menschen den Sinn für den Wert der Wahrheit verlieren, je mehr sie sich an Bullshit gewöhnen.

Und warum wäre das so schlimm?

Frankfurt: Zunächst einmal benötigt unsere Gesellschaft zuverlässige Informationen, um zentrale Aufgaben zu bewältigen. Ganz banale technische Dinge wie Logistik und Infrastruktur. Dann ist die Wahrheit natürlich in zwischenmenschlichen Beziehungen eine wichtige Norm - wir brauchen sie als Bezugspunkt, damit wir einander vertrauen können. Wenn das verlorengeht, sind stabile Beziehungen nicht mehr möglich. Dann gibt es noch einen Wert der Wahrheit, den ich nur sehr unpräzise formulieren kann. Es hat etwas mit Realismus zu tun - wie wir etwa unsere Wünsche und Ambitionen mit dem abgleichen, was möglich ist. Das hat ganz massive Auswirkungen darauf, wie wir unser Leben gestalten.

Nach Ihnen kann Bullshit auch eine Kunst sein. Kann Kunst dann auch Bullshit sein?

Frankfurt: Ich habe meinen Aufsatz 1986 in "Raritan" publiziert, einer literarischen Zeitschrift. Er hatte damals eine Passage über den Roman - der Roman hat ja, wie der Bullshit, nicht die Wahrheit als Bezugspunkt. Die Redakteure strichen diese Passage, weil sie die Aussage nicht drucken mochten, daß Literatur Bullshit ist. Einen wichtigen Unterschied habe ich damals aber übersehen: Fiktion behauptet, nichts anderes zu sein als Fiktion. Es findet also nicht, wie beim Bullshit, eine Manipulation statt.

Fühlen Sie sich in einer von Bullshit durchsetzten Kultur bedroht?

Frankfurt: In der Antike hat man zu Bullshit Sophisterei oder Rhetorik gesagt. Gemeint war alles, was nur auf einen Effekt abzielt und nicht auf die Wahrheit. Insofern die Rhetorik der Feind der Philosophie ist, ist es also wohl auch der Bullshit.

Ihr Essay ist ein Anfang, eine kurze Skizze. Gibt es noch viel zu tun in der Bullshit-Forschung?

Frankfurt: Mich beschäftigt derzeit das, was man in den USA Spin nennt. Spin ist die Art und Weise, wie etwa Politiker bestimmte Themen "drehen", um Kapital daraus zu schlagen. Die PR-Berater der Politiker werden "Spin Doctors" genannt, also Ärzte, im Gegensatz zum "Bullshit Artist". Der Arzt repariert etwas, der Künstler schafft etwas. Hinter Spin steckt also der Gedanke, man könne die Wirklichkeit reparieren. Das finde ich faszinierend.

Once were warriors: Why Islam failed Muslims

(Faith Freedom 11-4-2005)

Islam was immensely successful in the first few centuries of its birth. It spread like wildfire from Spain to Pakistan. The success was due to the fact that Islam is a warrior religion - the last of its kind today. But the qualities and ethos that led to success are also some of the reasons for its current failure. Today Muslims are among the poorest and most backward people in the world.

Lets take a look at some Islamic beliefs that make no sense unless you realise that Islam was designed to support a war machine. Firstly there is the emphasis of heavenly rewards for its fallen warriors. Just as the ferocious Vikings believed that brave fallen warriors go to Valhalla, Muslims believe that those who are killed in a Holy War (Jihad) go to heaven where they will be rewarded with 72 virgins.

For the conquerors who survived the war, they will get booty and again girls. So either way they win. It is useful for a commander to have brave warriors who do not fear death. Besides this, Muslims are also discouraged from fraternizing with non-Muslims. The Koran tells Muslims not to take Christians and Jews as friends and also says that Idolaters are filthy. Contempt for non-Muslims lead to hate. Hate is a useful emotion to cultivate in your warriors. Compassion and empathy for the “other” do not make willing warriors.

Another martial value that Islam promotes is discipline. It does this in many ways. Firstly, authority is centralized in one person - Mohammed and later his successors. There is no separation of church and state - or should I say mosque and state. This makes sure that there is no opposition. The Roman emperors too made sure that they were unchallenged by appointing themselves Pontifex Maximus (Chief Priest). This is in sharp contrast to medieval European kings whose ambitions were often opposed by the church.

Next, Islam is highly ritualistic and many rituals and practices appear to a modern person to be pointless. For example, out of the five pillars of Islam, four of them are ritualistic and in themselves do not do any material good. Praying five times a day, declaring Mohammed to be a prophet, going to Mecca to walk round and round the Black Stone and fasting during Ramadan do not by themselves make this a happier, kinder and more prosperous world. The only one of the five pillars that does some good to mankind is the giving of the zakat - alms for the poor. However, this alms giving must be only for Muslims or it does not count. Therefore it benefits only a fifth of mankind.

Would it not be better for the Grand Designer of Islam (whoever that might be) to declare the five pillars to contain prohibitions against murder, theft, adultery and encouragements to perform kindness and assistance to the unfortunate people of the world? Besides these five pillars, Islam has countless other rituals and practices. These include the growing of beards, which hand to use to wash your private parts, which shoe to put on first, what types of body hair you are allowed to remove and so on. Some of these practices and rituals appear meaningless to me but on further examination there is a purpose to them.

The trick is to stop thinking that Islam, like other religions, was designed primarily to uplift humanity from barbarism by making us kinder, more forgiving and so on. It was designed instead to support a war machine. Islamic rituals and practices are designed at least partly to induce discipline and to unite Islam’s early followers who were drawn from many tribes. Lets take a look at the requirement to pray five times a day, facing Mecca.

By praying five times a day, Muslims are reminded to submit to God 5 times a day. By facing Mecca, they are reminded of Arabia and to subtly get Muslims to identify themselves with Arabia. That is also why they insist that you cannot understand the Koran fully unless you know Arabic. Prayers are to be made in Arabic. That is why there are so many Arab wannabes among non-Arab Muslims. This is also why to this day, Muslims are a potential fifth column in western countries. Their loyalty is often to their Ummah and not to the state they live in. Loyalty to their nation state is weak.

Rituals are important as brainwashing tools to instill discipline and loyalty.
Islam's focus on rituals remind me of the rituals in the military. Every morning you have a flag raising ceremony. You salute the officers. You must all be clean shaven and wear the same clothes. You sing patriotic songs. Soldiers perform all manner of rituals designed to promote loyalty, bravery and obedience.

Performing Islam's seemingly meaningless rituals is an affirmation that they do not question the will of God. In practice this meant that they do not question Mohammed and his successors. This is really good military discipline and is something all military leaders want.

Now, lets turn our attention to the issue of apostasy for this is an important way in which Islam imposes discipline. As we all know, Islam is the only religion that insists that apostates be put to death. Muslims equate apostasy as treachery. For others, you are a true Christian, Buddhist or Hindu, only if you truly believe. Threatening people with death does not change what they believe in their hearts and is thus pointless.

This Muslim punishment only makes sense if you imagine yourself as a military commander of an army drawn from many tribes and religions (before conversion). An apostate is seen as someone who wants to defect to the enemy. Thus once again, Islamic teaching only make sense if you view Islam not so much as a religion like others but as a tool for Arab imperialism.

There is another thing that I should mention. According to the Koran and Hadiths, Muslims are allowed to have up to four wives and an unlimited number of slave girls. Having multiple wives actually gave a society constantly warring with its neighbours a military advantage over those that practice monogamy.

War widows can find new husbands and thereby produce children. Women were valued chiefly for their procreation abilities to produce more warriors. Of course in all ancient societies, women were lowly valued but more so in a warlike one where the survival of the society depended on male warriors. This accounts for the extra low status Islam gave women.

But what worked well for a medieval war machine is disastrous for Muslims in the modern world. For the early Muslims, they quickly gained wealth and power after they burst out of their poverty stricken Arabian Peninsula. The Arab war machine was supported by the blind obedience, brotherhood, courage, hatred and high birth rates inspired by Islam. But these same qualities have locked modern Muslims into poverty and often violence.

Without separation of mosque and state, it is difficult to make reforms. Islam is described by its followers as a complete way of life. This means that the ancient detailed instructions have been written down for Muslims to follow in all aspects of life for all time. This reminds me of the specialists and generalists of nature.

Some species like the Koala bear are specialists. They have adapted very well to a certain type of environment – the eucalyptus forests of Australia. But they are vulnerable if there is a change in environment. Generalists on the other hand do not evolve special advantages to thrive in any one environment.

Man is a generalist and can be found living in deserts as well as the frozen ice of the tundra. Had we specialized by growing blubber like the whales, we might thrive very well in the tundra but we can never live in deserts.

Islam is like the specialists. It prospered because its ethos makes it very successful as a medieval war machine when men fought with swords, bows and spears. But these same values make Muslims ill-equipped in an industrial and now post industrial world.

The emphasis on jihad where stained soldiers of Allah are rewarded with virgins in heaven may make great warriors but contribute to suicide bombers and intractable wars against unbelievers.

Conflicts with Muslims seem so hard to resolve as there is a never-ending stream of volunteers to fight in hopes of attaining their places in heaven. There can be no moderates when it comes to going to heaven. Inciting hatred for non-believers does not help the resolution of conflicts. Such thinking is bound to get a reaction from the non-believers they come into contact with.

The desire for war cannot be conducive for economic growth. This is doubly disastrous for Muslims because as I shall later explain, their religion retards economic progress in many ways. War coupled with economic weakness spells disaster. One of the driving force for economic growth is technology. While Islam can create disciplined soldiers, it cannot create good scientists.

As explained earlier, Islam’s ritualistic practices inculcate blind obedience among its followers and not questioning inquisitive minds. The way the Koran is taught in traditional Madrassahs is by memorization. This leaves no room for asking questions. The student is not encouraged to ask questions but only receives wisdom and learning from the teacher. Asking questions risks the student of being accused of blasphemy or unbelief.

The learning process is receptive and not interactive. Great scientists and philosophers do not come from such a passive environment. Human society progresses only if you have people willing to challenge orthodoxy. It should be noted that some of the greatest thinkers, scientists, philosophers, physicians and poets in Islam’s golden age were accused of blasphemy or apostasy. Bashshar Ibn Burd, Avicenna, Averroes, Al-Razi and Al-Ma’arri were most likely apostates.

Next we take a look at Islam’s subordination of women. This keeps them at home. Muslim women are not encouraged to work. It is a fact that women who stay at home tend to produce more children than those who go out to work. A high fertility rate may be a military advantage in an era when men fought with primitive weapons, but this is a handicap in the era of the internet.

Firstly, if women are regarded as second class citizens, there is less incentive to educate them properly. Semi-educated or illiterate mothers will find difficulty in educating their own children. Half the population is women. Therefore half the potential labour force is also women. You are not making full use of your human resources. This is not a new problem.

By Averroes time (1126 – 1198), the problem had manifested itself. Five hundred years after Mohammed, Muslim society already needed reforms. The practices that turned warring Arab tribes into world conquerors were already becoming outdated. This is what he said:

“Women are kept like domestic animals or house plants for purposes of gratification, of a very questionable character besides, instead of being allowed to take part in the production of material and intellectual wealth, and in the preservation of the same.”

Furthermore, a high fertility rate means more mouths to feed. While population pressures could be motivation for impoverished tribes to participate in wars of conquest in the 7th century, this is not an option today. You need industrial might to support a war machine today where wars are complex and expensive.

Today, a high fertility rate leads to poverty in third world countries and poverty stricken countries are advised by development experts to curb their population growth. Related to this issue of high fertility is the early age of some Muslim marriages. All agricultural societies tend to have early marriages. But other societies can be more easily persuaded to change with the times.

Muslim society, on the other hand, is more resistance to change. Thus recently, an Indian Muslim group wants exemption from a law requiring marriage partners to be at least 18 years old. This well-meaning law is aimed at allowing time for people to get a proper education before marriage and child-care.

The problem arises for the Muslim community because of Mohammed’s marriage to 9 year old Aisha. To accept this law would in their eyes be an insult to their holy Prophet. How can a Muslim accept a law, which would have criminalized their Prophet? This case again highlights how Islam is stuck in the 7th century.

Islam is a warrior’s creed that served its early followers well. From impoverished desert tribes, they rose to forge an empire in a short time that stretched from Spain to India. The ethos it engendered – brotherhood for believers, contempt and hatred for non-believers, belief in heavenly rewards for fallen warriors, a high fertility rate (which requires the subordination of women), blind obedience – created formidable warriors.

But these same qualities are handicaps for Muslims in the age of the microchip. Today they lead to poverty, belligerency, war and defeat. Many Muslims look back with fondness to their days of glory and try to recover their former days by using the old methods. That is why there is today a rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism across the Muslim world. They are bewildered at their weakness and look for conspiracy theories. Muslims think their failure is due to some Jewish or American plot not realizing that failure comes from within themselves. They are out of touch with reality.

Once were warriors, Muslims are now like Don Quixote tilting at windmills in a world they no longer understand.

New Orleans: A Geopolitical Prize

(Strategic forecasting 1-9-2005)

The American political system was founded in Philadelphia, but the American nation was built on the vast farmlands that stretch from the Alleghenies to the Rockies. That farmland produced the wealth that funded American industrialization: It permitted the formation of a class of small landholders who, amazingly, could produce more than they could consume. They could sell their excess crops in the east and in Europe and save that money, which eventually became the founding capital of American industry.

But it was not the extraordinary land nor the farmers and ranchers who alone set the process in motion. Rather, it was geography -- the extraordinary system of rivers that flowed through the Midwest and allowed them to ship their surplus to the rest of the world. All of the rivers flowed into one -- the Mississippi -- and the Mississippi flowed to the ports in and around one city: New Orleans. It was in New Orleans that the barges from upstream were unloaded and their cargos stored, sold and reloaded on ocean-going vessels. Until last Sunday, New Orleans was, in many ways, the pivot of the American economy.

For that reason, the Battle of New Orleans in January 1815 was a key moment in American history. Even though the battle occurred after the War of 1812 was over, had the British taken New Orleans, we suspect they wouldn't have given it back. Without New Orleans, the entire Louisiana Purchase would have been valueless to the United States. Or, to state it more precisely, the British would control the region because, at the end of the day, the value of the Purchase was the land and the rivers - which all converged on the Mississippi and the ultimate port of New Orleans. The hero of the battle was Andrew Jackson, and when he became president, his obsession with Texas had much to do with keeping the Mexicans away from New Orleans.

During the Cold War, a macabre topic of discussion among bored graduate students who studied such things was this: If the Soviets could destroy one city with a large nuclear device, which would it be? The usual answers were Washington or New York. For me, the answer was simple: New Orleans. If the Mississippi River was shut to traffic, then the foundations of the economy would be shattered. The industrial minerals needed in the factories wouldn't come in, and the agricultural wealth wouldn't flow out. Alternative routes really weren't available. The Germans knew it too: A U-boat campaign occurred near the mouth of the Mississippi during World War II. Both the Germans and Stratfor have stood with Andy Jackson: New Orleans was the prize.

Last Sunday, nature took out New Orleans almost as surely as a nuclear strike. Hurricane Katrina's geopolitical effect was not, in many ways, distinguishable from a mushroom cloud. The key exit from North America was closed. The petrochemical industry, which has become an added value to the region since Jackson's days, was at risk. The navigability of the Mississippi south of New Orleans was a question mark. New Orleans as a city and as a port complex had ceased to exist, and it was not clear that it could recover.

The ports of South Louisiana and New Orleans, which run north and south of the city, are as important today as at any point during the history of the republic. On its own merit, the Port of South Louisiana is the largest port in the United States by tonnage and the fifth-largest in the world. It exports more than 52 million tons a year, of which more than half are agricultural products -- corn, soybeans and so on. A larger proportion of U.S. agriculture flows out of the port. Almost as much cargo, nearly 57 million tons, comes in through the port -- including not only crude oil, but chemicals and fertilizers, coal, concrete and so on.

A simple way to think about the New Orleans port complex is that it is where the bulk commodities of agriculture go out to the world and the bulk commodities of industrialism come in. The commodity chain of the global food industry starts here, as does that of American industrialism. If these facilities are gone, more than the price of goods shifts: The very physical structure of the global economy would have to be reshaped. Consider the impact to the U.S. auto industry if steel doesn't come up the river, or the effect on global food supplies if U.S. corn and soybeans don't get to the markets.

The problem is that there are no good shipping alternatives. River transport is cheap, and most of the commodities we are discussing have low value-to-weight ratios. The U.S. transport system was built on the assumption that these commodities would travel to and from New Orleans by barge, where they would be loaded on ships or offloaded. Apart from port capacity elsewhere in the United States, there aren't enough trucks or rail cars to handle the long-distance hauling of these enormous quantities -- assuming for the moment that the economics could be managed, which they can't be.

The focus in the media has been on the oil industry in Louisiana and Mississippi. This is not a trivial question, but in a certain sense, it is dwarfed by the shipping issue. First, Louisiana is the source of about 15 percent of U.S.-produced petroleum, much of it from the Gulf. The local refineries are critical to American infrastructure. Were all of these facilities to be lost, the effect on the price of oil worldwide would be extraordinarily painful. If the river itself became unnavigable or if the ports are no longer functioning, however, the impact to the wider economy would be significantly more severe. In a sense, there is more flexibility in oil than in the physical transport of these other commodities.

There is clearly good news as information comes in. By all accounts, the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, which services supertankers in the Gulf, is intact. Port Fourchon, which is the center of extraction operations in the Gulf, has sustained damage but is recoverable. The status of the oil platforms is unclear and it is not known what the underwater systems look like, but on the surface, the damage - though not trivial -- is manageable.

The news on the river is also far better than would have been expected on Sunday. The river has not changed its course. No major levees containing the river have burst. The Mississippi apparently has not silted up to such an extent that massive dredging would be required to render it navigable. Even the port facilities, although apparently damaged in many places and destroyed in few, are still there. The river, as transport corridor, has not been lost.

What has been lost is the city of New Orleans and many of the residential suburban areas around it. The population has fled, leaving behind a relatively small number of people in desperate straits. Some are dead, others are dying, and the magnitude of the situation dwarfs the resources required to ameliorate their condition. But it is not the population that is trapped in New Orleans that is of geopolitical significance: It is the population that has left and has nowhere to return to.

The oil fields, pipelines and ports required a skilled workforce in order to operate. That workforce requires homes. They require stores to buy food and other supplies. Hospitals and doctors. Schools for their children. In other words, in order to operate the facilities critical to the United States, you need a workforce to do it -- and that workforce is gone. Unlike in other disasters, that workforce cannot return to the region because they have no place to live. New Orleans is gone, and the metropolitan area surrounding New Orleans is either gone or so badly damaged that it will not be inhabitable for a long time.

It is possible to jury-rig around this problem for a short time. But the fact is that those who have left the area have gone to live with relatives and friends. Those who had the ability to leave also had networks of relationships and resources to manage their exile. But those resources are not infinite -- and as it becomes apparent that these people will not be returning to New Orleans any time soon, they will be enrolling their children in new schools, finding new jobs, finding new accommodations. If they have any insurance money coming, they will collect it. If they have none, then -- whatever emotional connections they may have to their home -- their economic connection to it has been severed. In a very short time, these people will be making decisions that will start to reshape population and workforce patterns in the region.

A city is a complex and ongoing process - one that requires physical infrastructure to support the people who live in it and people to operate that physical infrastructure. We don't simply mean power plants or sewage treatment facilities, although they are critical. Someone has to be able to sell a bottle of milk or a new shirt. Someone has to be able to repair a car or do surgery. And the people who do those things, along with the infrastructure that supports them, are gone -- and they are not coming back anytime soon.

It is in this sense, then, that it seems almost as if a nuclear weapon went off in New Orleans. The people mostly have fled rather than died, but they are gone. Not all of the facilities are destroyed, but most are. It appears to us that New Orleans and its environs have passed the point of recoverability. The area can recover, to be sure, but only with the commitment of massive resources from outside -- and those resources would always be at risk to another Katrina.

The displacement of population is the crisis that New Orleans faces. It is also a national crisis, because the largest port in the United States cannot function without a city around it. The physical and business processes of a port cannot occur in a ghost town, and right now, that is what New Orleans is. It is not about the facilities, and it is not about the oil. It is about the loss of a city's population and the paralysis of the largest port in the United States.

Let's go back to the beginning. The United States historically has depended on the Mississippi and its tributaries for transport. Barges navigate the river. Ships go on the ocean. The barges must offload to the ships and vice versa. There must be a facility to empower this exchange. It is also the facility where goods are stored in transit. Without this port, the river can't be used. Protecting that port has been, from the time of the Louisiana Purchase, a fundamental national security issue for the United States.

Katrina has taken out the port -- not by destroying the facilities, but by rendering the area uninhabited and potentially uninhabitable. That means that even if the Mississippi remains navigable, the absence of a port near the mouth of the river makes the Mississippi enormously less useful than it was. For these reasons, the United States has lost not only its biggest port complex, but also the utility of its river transport system -- the foundation of the entire American transport system. There are some substitutes, but none with sufficient capacity to solve the problem.

It follows from this that the port will have to be revived and, one would assume, the city as well. The ports around New Orleans are located as far north as they can be and still be accessed by ocean-going vessels. The need for ships to be able to pass each other in the waterways, which narrow to the north, adds to the problem. Besides, the Highway 190 bridge in Baton Rouge blocks the river going north. New Orleans is where it is for a reason: The United States needs a city right there.

New Orleans is not optional for the United States' commercial infrastructure. It is a terrible place for a city to be located, but exactly the place where a city must exist. With that as a given, a city will return there because the alternatives are too devastating. The harvest is coming, and that means that the port will have to be opened soon. As in Iraq, premiums will be paid to people prepared to endure the hardships of working in New Orleans. But in the end, the city will return because it has to.

Geopolitics is the stuff of permanent geographical realities and the way they interact with political life. Geopolitics created New Orleans. Geopolitics caused American presidents to obsess over its safety. And geopolitics will force the city's resurrection, even if it is in the worst imaginable place.

Polygamy and Terrorism

(William Tucker the american enterprise magazine - 26-7-05)




After almost four years of dealing with Al Qaeda, jihad, Iraq, and Muslim terrorism, it is obvious that we are up against something we have never encountered before in our history.

We have fought and defeated a Nazi regime that was unprecedented in its cruelty and intent on wiping whole peoples from the earth. We fought and defeated an Imperial Japan and helped turn it into a modern nation. We fought the Korean and Vietnam Wars and saw how the portions of Asia we rescued thrived while those that fell under Communism turned into bleak totalitarian societies.

But we have never fought an enemy so utterly “in love with death,” as the terrorists themselves put it, so willing to commit suicide and take the whole earth with them in pursuit of their cause.

All this demands that we take a look at Muslim society to find out what makes it so different. This does not mean we should desist in our efforts to bring democracy to Iraq or end terrorism. But it would be useful to find pressure points that might make our task easier.

What differentiates Islam from the world’s other great religions—Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism—is that it sanctions and practices polygamy. How did this happen?

The consensus among anthropologists is that humanity spent the first 4-5 million years of our evolutionary history living monogamously in small hunting-and-gathering tribes. We know this because the few hunter-gatherers that remain—the Kalahari Bushmen, the Pygmies of Africa, the Australian Aborigines—are all monogamous.

What is so important about monogamy? Its principle advantage is that monogamy guarantees every man an equal chance of having a wife. For small, tightly knit bands of humans surviving in perilous environments, this was crucial for maintaining group loyalty. If a dominant male took more than one wife while others were left with none, dissention would arise and the solidarity of the group would be destroyed.

Polygamy eventually did arise in nearly all parts of the world, however, and anthropologists believe it had to do with growing prosperity. When the first farmers and herders began to accumulate fixed wealth, women began to be bought and sold as wives. The “brideprice”—a payment the wife’s family demands of the husband’s family—is universal in polygamous societies. As the accumulation of wealth grew unevenly, wealthier men took more wives while poorer men were left with none.

Polygamy is still practiced widely in West Africa, where leading men sometimes take as many as 30-50 wives. This leaves a huge residue of unattached men. It is probably the principle reason why so many African countries are beset by “revolutionary armies” living in the bush and raiding rural villages to steal women.

By the fifth century B.C., most of the world’s major religions had been established and had rejected polygamy as part of their social contract. When the Prophet Mohammad founded Islam in the seventh century, however, he inherited the polygamy that was still being practiced by desert herding tribes. Although Mohammed limited each man to four wives and required that he treat them equally, he did not abolish polygamy. That decision has had a tremendous impact on history.

The prohibition against more than four wives was not always honored anyway and the “Sultan’s harem” became a staple of Muslim culture. The counterpoint has been the large populations of unattached warlike men that populate Islamic history.

Islam has a long history of conquest, but it has also been plagued by revolutions from within. Typically a band of unattached men will go into the desert, decide that the faith being practiced by the urban elites is not the “true Islam,” and burst back upon the cities to conquer them—and take their women as well. Jihad has always been the faith of these efforts.

Today polygamy is not practiced widely in Islamic countries, and only accounts for about ten percent of all marriages. The country where the distribution of wives is most unequal—Saudi Arabia—seems to be the best at producing roving jihadists who roam the world in search of conflict.

The absence of a norm of a “man for every woman, a woman for every man” also creates an entirely different male psychology. At one extreme, men consider their own lives to be worthless and expendable because they will not have the chance to reproduce. At the other extreme, they are promised “72 virgins in heaven.” Sometimes the extremes converge.

Polygamy creates dysfunctional societies. Jihad, with its perpetual social unrest, is unlikely to disappear until it is eliminated. I would suggest the United States propose a “right to reproduce” be added to the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The UN would be the perfect place to initiate a global debate.


William Tucker is a regular columnist for TAE Online